Category: Uncategorized

“Another vote for Kerry” was one reaction to an ex-Republican writing to say that he’s voting for Badnarik this November. Let’s analyze this from a mathematical perspective.

Bush has zero votes. Kerry has zero votes. Badnarik has zero votes. Voter X votes for Badnarik. How many votes does Kerry have? A) one vote, B) ten votes, C) zero votes?

Let’s try it using some different numbers. Bush has 39,999,999 votes. Kerry has 39,999,999 votes. Voter X votes for Badnarik. How many votes does Kerry have? A) 40,000,000, B) 39,999,999, C) Five.

Alternatively, we can look at it from an ideological perspective. Kerry favors bigger government. Bush favors bigger government. Badnarik favors smaller government. Voter X, who favors smaller government, votes for Badnarik. This is a vote for A) bigger government, or B) smaller government?

There’s simply no reasonable way that you can claim a vote for a third party candidate is a vote for anyone but that third party candidate. To assume that any such votes would have gone to one of the two bifactional candidates is to make the same fallacy that the RIAA makes when people copy a CD – a willingness to copy a CD is not equivalent to a willingness to purchase a CD. If I didn’t vote for Badnarik, (or Peroutka), I simply wouldn’t vote. I would NEVER vote for either Bush or Kerry. If there’s no one to whom you can consent, then withdrawing your consent is the only option.

If you simply want to vote for a winner, then vote for whoever is leading in the polls the day before the election. That’s essentially what the Republican cheerleaders are urging others to do. But don’t pretend you have any principles beyond bandwagon-jumping. And for the love of all that’s good and holy, stop embarrassing yourself with your apparent inability to fathom basic addition.

Michelle Malkin advocates Newspeak:

As for the term “concentration camps,” it is very misleading. It is true that many politicians and public officials, including President Roosevelt himself, used this term to describe the relocation centers. But it wasn’t until the liberation of the Nazi death camps beginning in 1945 that the phrase took on the popular meaning that it retains today–that is, places of barbaric cruelty and torture on the order of what the Jews and others suffered under Hitler. To compare American’s internment and relocation centers to the Third Reich’s extermination camps is to recklessly distort history and to trivialize the experience of Holocaust victims. Even the Commission acknowledged that, “the phrase ‘concentration camps’ summons up images and ideas which are inaccurate and unfair.”

Please, the term not only isn’t misleading at all, it is entirely accurate! No one has ever claimed that the US WWII-era concentration camps – camps designed to concentrate a group of individuals ill-favored by the federal government – were labor and death camps such as Auschwitz. But since Ms Malkin wants to convince us that these concentration camps were good, right and proper, it doesn’t serve her purpose to call these camps by their linguistically precise and historically accurate name. It’s fitting that she should be so indifferent as to history, considering her inability to learn from it.

Historically, civil rights have often yielded to security in times of crisis. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, which enabled him to detain thousands of rebels and subversives without access to judges. In defying a Supreme Court order to restore habeas corpus, Lincoln refused to let “the government itself go to pieces” for the sake of a single law.

Order out of chaos. There’s a new one. Malkin is tearing down her own case here by appealing to the example of Lincoln. Malkin may still be under the illusion that she values freedom, but she is simply attempting to rationalize the female instinct of Sicherheit uber alles. This is why the Fascist Party made the women’s right to vote a priority in its manifesto. Scare a woman enough, and she’ll enthusiastically embrace disarming the populace, martial law and death camps.

It’s always interesting to see a media whore transform into a big government whore. The camera lovers just can’t seem to keep themselves from “growing”, as they call it in Washington. Rush Limbaugh’s done it, but it took him years to devolve from a conservative into a Republican. I don’t know if anyone keeps track of these things, but Ms Malkin may now hold the speed record.

RT laments:

I am very feminine. I never have any luck with guys. I wear pink a lot. I wear skirts a lot. I wear heels a lot. I never say I don’t like fishing or camping, but I actually have guys say I’m “high-maintenance” and they are sure I would never go fishing or camping or something. Well, they never asked me. I don’t have a problem with either. They are always going out with women who ask them out or asking out women who put out so much they could make a fortune if they charged. I am always careful never to say ANYTHING negative around a guy now ABOUT ANYTHING, especially about him. I never hardly even get asked out. And I’m definitely not ugly or fat. Definitely not. However, I am told I don’t talk enough. I talk to my friends. I just don’t go up to guys and ask them out. I was told by one guy I’m not confident enough to date him. Well, I never spend any time thinking about what other people think about me anymore, and I’m confident enought that I’ve delivered Shakespeare on stage and gotten after show compliments. Men ought to work on keeping their pants zipped and being interested in quiet, nice women. Because they’re not. They’re just not. They act like jackasses, like Scott Peterson.

Let’s see. In the course of a single paragraph – okay, in fairness it really should be two – RT manages to expose that she’s a high-maintenance women and thinks that men act like jackasses, are unfaithful and probably murderers to boot. Men may not be complex, but neither are we stupid, and we’re surprisingly good at picking up on this sort of hatred bubbling under the surface.

It is true that many young men without much experience of women think that they want a confident, independent woman who doesn’t need them, but these are mostly younger guys who just want to make sure a girlfriend won’t interfere with playing Doom 3 for six hours a night. That sort of guy usually isn’t looking for a long-term relationship, he’s looking for someone to provide friendship with favors and will otherwise stay out of his life.

One thing women who don’t get asked out might want to consider is to try to be more responsive. If a man looks at you, then don’t immediately look away if you want him to approach you. You don’t have to ask him out or run up to him and start humping his leg like a dog – although I’ve seen that work with a guy who’s got a sense of humor – but the usual routine is this:

1. Man looks.

2. Woman looks back.

3. Man smiles.

4. Woman smiles back.

This informs the man that he has the woman’s approval to approach her. Non-verbal communication is often more important than verbal communication at this stage. And whatever you do, don’t pull your friends into the conversation, as men know that women use their friends as a shield against those they aren’t interested in. If you start doing that, a man might easily conclude you’ve got no interest and that he might as well look elsewhere.

A very good friend of mine had a philosophy to go out once with everyone who asked her out. She doesn’t do that anymore, now being married with child – but some of her good male friends are men that she knew from the beginning weren’t terribly interesting to her from a romantic point of view, but that she took the time to get to know anyhow. She met some real losers too, but that’s the risk you take, because no one can always tell the difference between a winner and a loser at first glance.

This is for the early birds to hop in and start making comments, as per Res’s request.

When 13 Democratic members of the U.S. Congress asked United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to send election monitors to the U.S. this fall, the move outraged many Republicans and other proponents of national sovereignty.

When those same 13 Democratic members of Congress were turned down by Annan, they took their request to Secretary of State Colin Powell – again to the shock of many Republicans and those who warn about foreign entanglements.

Yesterday, those 13 Democratic House members got their surprising answer from the State Department – the administration will indeed invite foreign election monitors to observe the U.S. elections in November.

It always amazes me how those who warn about how awful John Kerry might be pay no attention to how awful George Bush actually is. He is every bit the traitorous sell-out of national sovereignty that Bill Clinton was. The fact that he can’t speak without mangling his words doesn’t make him a good man any more than Bill Clinton’s quick wit made him a wise one.

Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, Ms Theresa Heinz Kerry:

You cannot solve problems by throwing stones, and you cannot solve problems by telling lies, and you cannot solve problems by wishing ill to other people,” she said. “The only way you solve problems is by holding hands and talking about it….

Oh sweet Moses! There are times when I think it’s possible to be an adult and a Democrat. This isn’t one of them.

Michelle Malkin thinks she can simultaneously play and referee:

Taken in totality, rather than in selective slivers, my defense of Roosevelt’s homeland security measures remains unrefuted.

Next, please.

Malkin skips over the point that her entire thesis is utterly absurd! The totality of all the minor dangers Malkin cites doesn’t come close to that posed by the British Army in the War of 1812 – when British troops actually invaded the American homeland, burned the White House, etc. and yet the Commander-in-Chief did not then feel the need to completely shred the Constitution as did FDR with his executive order to intern and relocate American citizens of Japanese descent.

There was never any serious danger to the West Coast. Even if a factory or two was sabotaged, even if a military base or two was spied upon, even if a submarine lobbed a few shells at Los Angeles, it was not going to have any effect on the war effort whatsoever, as US industrial capacity absolutely dwarfed that of Germany and Japan combined. Since Malkin apparently knows nothing about military history, she rests her case on posterior-covering reports which consist of little more than what-ifs and just-maybes. Not having read the book, I don’t know if she’s actually foolish enough to claim that the West Coast was under the threat of invasion, but from the sound of her defense, I don’t think she was quite that detached from the history of this space-time continuum.

As for the protective aspects of the interment, if Malkin’s book causes her to become insufficiently popular with enough people, shall we lock her up against her will? For her own protection of course.

With Michelle’s support for the Patriot Act and now this boot-licking justification of State muscle-flexing, it seems she is as naive as she is lovely. Would-be dictators always promise protection from incipient danger, if only they can set themselves above the law. That hoary old trick was ancient when Marius was pulling it on the Conscript Fathers.

UPDATE: Here’s some information on the man that Ms Malkin is defending. It’s particularly interesting to hear that he bragged he had “committed enough illegal acts to be impeached and jailed for 999 years” even before he was seizing the nation’s gold and forcing American citizens out of their homes.

A week or two ago, I mentioned that if Wave 3 began in Feb-March, that it could be expected to run downhill until July 2006. One thing interesting about yesterday’s swoon was that in addition to breaking the important supports at 1080 and 1074, the SPX actually managed to get ahead of the schedule I proposed for it.

With 16.56 percent of the estimated 640 days to the next major bottom, the SPX has fallen 17.06 percent. The NDX, on the other hand, has only fallen 18.63 percent since its top, in 21.25 percent of the time. (The NDX usually tops differently than the SPX and DOW, although they bottom together at the big turns. In this case, it came 30 trading days earlier.)

Since the market never moves in straight lines, we’ll probably see a mini-rally soon, but I wouldn’t start looking for a multi-day one until the NDX falls another 5 percent or so. The last two short term moves were (i) down 10.86 percent and (ii) up 3.89 percent, so 6.87 percent in five trading days would seem too little movement in too short a time to mark the end of (iii).

All of this assumes, of course, that the wave patterns are meaningful. Always take it with a grain of salt.

MEXICO CITY – The US drugs czar has admitted that Washington’s anti-narcotics policy in Latin America has so far failed.

Mr John Walters, who heads the US Office of National Drug Control Policy, acknowledged that billions of dollars of investment over many years have failed to dent the flow of Latin American cocaine onto US streets, but he predicted progress would be seen soon.

It’s not working, so of course, efforts will be redoubled. After almost 25 years of the War on Drugs, with nothing to show for it except hundreds of thousands of innocent people in jail and numerous American liberties destroyed, you’d think pro-drug war conservatives would consider pulling their heads out of their posteriors and wake up to how they’ve been helping destroy America.

“But what if we legalized drugs,” they gasp in horror. “Surely the country will collapse in a maelstrom of crack whores and coke fiends!” Well, Mr. Historical Ignoramus, seeing as how society and individual rights were in better shape back when the government was less powerful, rope was made of hemp and cocaine was legal, I don’t think we have a whole lot to fear, not from drugs, anyhow.

Using the power of the central state to control human behavior is always a mistake. As with the Patriot Act, the War on Drugs was designed as a weapon to be used against the American people. Don’t believe me? Fine, email me your telephone number and I’ll phone in an anonymous tip about the meth lab in your garage. Then you can discover firsthand just how well your Constitutional rights protect you.

Are you noticing a pattern here? We must throw out the Constitution because the Japanese are going to invade across 5500 miles of ocean! We must throw out the Constitution because Billy might smoke pot! We must throw out the Constitution because someone might send money to their bank in the Caymans! We must throw out the Constitution because someone is killing someone else in Iraq! We must throw out the Constitution because someone blew up two buildings in New York! We must throw out the Constitution because we need to promote economic growth!

Americans deserve precisely what they’re getting, which is to say a nation sans Constitution and individual rights. Ben Franklin warned us from the start, but no, we knew better! Things are different now, in this, the modern age. Sure, there may have been conspiracies in Rome, Byzantium, China, Greece, France, Spain, Germany, Russia and every other state power in the history of the world, but you’d have to be a crazy wearer of tinfoil hats if you think anyone would conspire after power in America! Why would anyone want to control the richest, most militarily powerful nation the world has ever known?

So, vote for Bush or vote for Kerry if you like, it makes no difference. Truly, it doesn’t. The die is cast and it has been for some time, probably since 1971 and Bretton Woods. I’m voting Libertarian because I believe there is value in acts of defiance, and because it is better to grasp at the slimmest of slim chances than to lend my hand and my consent to the devastation.

Politicians like to say they’re bullish on America. But odds are high that it’s those who short it that will reap the profits. In forty years, when the United States abandons its sovereignty to become a state of the American Union, (as the Free Trade Area of the Americas will likely be known as it follows the model of the European Economic Community), you will not be able to say that you weren’t warned.

But perhaps the most striking of all the differences between American and European working patterns, however, relates to working hours. In 1999, according to figures from the OECD, the average American in employment worked just under 2,000 hours a year (1,976). The average German worked 1,535 – 22 per cent less.

According to a recent American study, the average Frenchman works a staggering 32 per cent less. The journalist Madeleine Bunting has recently lamented that British workers are being pushed towards the American model, but the British worker is still working 12 per cent less than his American counterpart. This gap between American and European working hours is of surprisingly recent origin; 25 years ago, it didn’t exist. Between 1979 and 1999, the average US working year lengthened by 50 hours, nearly four per cent. But the average German working year shrank by 12 per cent. The same was true elsewhere in Europe.

How are we to explain this divergence? The obvious answer is European legislation such as the French 35-hour week or the recent British reduction of the hours worked by junior doctors. Another theory points to differences in marginal rates of taxation. But I cannot resist suggesting another possible explanation – one that owes a debt to Weber’s famous essay The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which he wrote almost exactly a century ago.

Weber believed he had identified a link between the rise of Protestantism and the development of what he called “the spirit of capitalism”. I would like to propose a modern version of Weber’s theory, namely “The Atheist Sloth Ethic and the Spirit of Collectivism”.

Interesting concept. It makes sense that atheists would be less inclined to work hard, since if this life is all they’ve got before vanishing into oblivion, there’s no point in slaving away instead of devoting oneself to an Epicurean philosophy of eat, drink and be merry. Oh, sure, some misguided non-souls among the godless might be inclined to work hard to make a better life for their children or something, but in general, it would be logical for the soulless to employ the same parasitic attitude towards societal wealth that they do towards societal mores.

I can’t say I entirely disagree, either. As I’ve written previously, I don’t think anyone ever went to his Maker – or into the dark bowels of oblivion – wishing he’d spent more time at the office.